Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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English Edition · Branch 101 of 254
Chapter XI · The Loss of Althea · pp. 115–129
The Keepers of the People
p. 117Ralph Falcon and his wife returned, to London only for a few days before sailing for the East. The steamer he had chartered lay already loaded in the docks. Lord and Lady Lisdor came to London to bid him goodbye; and the night before sailing the four of them and Althea dined together. Even Mrs. Falcon’s high spirits could not brighten the dinner: Althea was in a mournful mood; Lady Lisdor’s spirit was attune with hers; and Ralph Falcon was silent even beyond his wont.
It had been arranged that Althea should lunch with the Lisdors next day, and drive with them down to the Docks; but she did not come; and, thinking that her mother had forbidden her going, or that Mrs. Falcon had made some change in the matter, they drove down to the wharf without her. A crowd of smart people had come to bid farewell to the brilliant Mrs. Falcon, as the society papers called her; and the quarter-deck was crowded with her acquaintances and intimates. As the bell rang for them to leave the steamer, Ralph Falcon was standing apart from them with Lady Lisdor, who was wishing him all good wishes for the voyage and the future.
“Thank you,” he said gravely. “Thank you very much. But I came to England a year too late.” “A year too late?” she said.
“Yes;” he said slowly: “a year too late to win you,” his eyes filled with a sudden fire. “For by the sword of Ralph, and the honour of the Princes you are the woman I should be taking to Varandaleel! And had your husband been other than my kinsman, I should be taking you even now!”
She shrank back a little from the fire in his eyes; then looked into them for a breath with an answering, brief flame in her own; and said no word of denial.
Lord Lisdor came to them, and Ralph Falcon said to him, “Some day the roaming fit will come on you; and you may wish to see me. Take this ring” — he drew from his pocket a gold signet ring engraved with the Falcon claw — “to Isaac Abrahams of Peshawur, the Jewish banker. He is an honest man; and he will put you in the way of finding me.”
Lord Lisdor took the ring, thought a moment, and said, “I believe I shall come some day.”
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book I, Chapter XI · The Loss of Althea · Book I, Chapter XI · The Loss of Althea · pp. 115–129
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.